Armanda Bastos

Armanda Bastos is a Professor in One Health in the Department of Veterinary Tropical Diseases at the University of Pretoria. In keeping with the interdisciplinarity required for effective One Health research, she is also an active academic in the Department of Zoology and Entomology. This dual faculty role permits the complementary merging of two key research focus areas; infectious disease epidemiology and wildlife conservation. Armanda completed her PhD degree on the Molecular epidemiology and diagnosis of SAT-type foot-and-mouth disease viruses in southern Africa, whilst employed as a Senior Veterinary Researcher (1994-2000) at the flagship ARC-Onderstepoort Veterinary Research (ARC-OVR) BSL3 laboratory. In July 2000 she was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Zoology and Entomology, and subsequently promoted to Senior Lecturer (2002-2006), Associate Professor (2007-2012), and Professor (2013-present). She served as Deputy Director and Acting Director of the Mammal Research Institute from 2016-17 and as Head of the Department of Zoology and Entomology from 2018-2022.

A molecular biologist by training, Armanda’s research encompasses molecular epidemiology, molecular diagnostics and the molecular taxonomy and evolution of a broad range of viral, bacterial, zoonotic and vector-borne disease agents, and their vertebrate and invertebrate hosts. Amongst her most highly-cited outputs is the p72 genotyping method developed in 2003 which permits rapid assignment of field and outbreak strains of African swine fever (ASF) to one of the 25 known genotypes. In her current role she oversees the One Health platform at the Hans Hoheisen Wildlife Research Station (HHWRS) near Orpen in the Kruger National Park, and coordinates the MSc in Global One Health, a joint offering of the University of Pretoria and the Institute for Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium.

June 2023